That We All May Be One

Our First Lesson today from the Prophet Isaiah is the wonderful “alternative reading” for Ash Wednesday! The traditional one is from Joel and talks about “blowing the trumpet” and “proclaiming a solemn fast” and about “priests, weeping between the vestibule and altar” because of the sins of their people.

This reading tells us what kind of fast actually is pleasing to God! “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isaiah 58:6-7)

But what has that to do with fasting, you may ask? What has that to do with Lent? Sounds like some of that “social justice” agenda the Presiding Bishop is always talking about! No, it’s the kind of “social justice” agenda God is always talking about! And, God’s people – from Moses to Isaiah to Jesus to the Church — and to this very Lenten season.

You see, fasting is related to “abstinence.” It is about “giving something up” for God. Because God is more important to you than “stuff.” And, believe me, my dear friends: 

If you loose the bonds of injustice, you’re going to have to give something up!

If you let the oppressed go free, you’re going to have to give something up!

If you share your bread with the hungry, you’re going to have to give something up!

If you bring the homeless poor into your house, you’ll have to give something up!

If you see the naked and cover them, you’ll have to give something up!

If you stop hiding from your own kin, you’ll have to give something up!

And that…is fasting!

But, if you’ll do those things, if you’ll engage in that kind of fast, Isaiah assures you that, “…your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.  Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.” (Isaiah 58:8-9)

Yes, God will say, “Here I am” because you will have learned the truth of what Jesus said in today’s Gospel, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Matthew 10:13).

You will have learned what it means to put new wine into new wineskins.

And God will be pleased!

I started reading the Book of Daniel today and found that there’s actually a great Commentary on it in the New Interpreter’s Bible series by a Quaker named Daniel Smith-Christopher. He says that Daniel is one of the most unusual, and one of the most dangerous, books in the Hebrew Bible!

Unusual because part of it is written in Hebrew and part of it in Greek and because the first half is collection of court stories, con-text stories and con-flict stories while the second half comprises the most important example of apocalyptic literature in the Old Testament. But the book is dangerous because it can contribute to social unrest, and even perhaps to revolution!

The book begins with what Smith-Christopher calls “the cuisine of resistance” (what a great phrase!) as Daniel refuses to eat “the king’s food and wine” and instead chooses to remain faithful to the dietary laws of his people. It’s an example of the kind of non-violent resistance many oppressed people have chosen to keep their dignity even in the midst of their captivity.

But it’s also a reminder that our faith often calls us to active non-conformity with the world. And perhaps we all need to ask ourselves what aspects of “the king’s food and wine” we Christians ought to resist for the sake of the Gospel. For the writer of Daniel, food was just a symbol of the resistance he thought we were called to show toward total domination and assimilation by the culture of the day!

Are we not also called to a life of resistance to the enticements of financial power and control over the destiny of other people? Are we not called to question the control powerful nations like our own exert over the developing world? What is the food and wine that the modern-day Empire is offering us?

So much of the advertising and marketing we have been seeing over these last days of “black Friday’ and the beginning the Christmas shopping season is geared toward changing our habits and convincing us that luxuries are really necessities that “we can’t live without!” And the tragic thing is that, so many times, those luxuries are disguised as necessities – things we need, rather than just things we want!

I wonder if this season is not the appropriate time for North American Christians like us to begin asking serious questions about our habits of consumption. Not only whether what we are buying is too much, but also whether it’s consumption that supports a living wage or a consumption that fosters a safe environment for workers.

John Woolman, that great itinerant preacher of the 18^th century, refused to wear clothing that was either dyed or made by means of the slave trade. Perhaps we 21^st century Christians need to think about no longer defiling ourselves with “the king’s food and wine.” And instead, like Daniel, begin standing with those exiled people the Empire continues to control!  

“Wake up, my spirit; awake, lute and harp; I myself will awaken the dawn.” (Psalm 108:2)

For all of the problems with our old apartment building in New York city, one of its blessings is that it we are up nineteen floors and overlook the East River and across Queens to the horizon. On days when I do not say my Morning Prayers with the staff at the church center where I work, I say them at sunrise looking out my living room windows at the dawn.

Indeed, I try to “awaken the dawn” by beginning as the first narrow strip of purple appears on the skyline and finishing in the full light of the morning sun. That is not always possible, of course, but when we can say our prayers somehow in harmony with the natural order, it is very powerful. Like when I when I can pray the “phos hilaron” just at sunset — “Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’

Monastics often refer to the “sanctification of time” and it is this phenomenon to which they refer. Praying at (relatively) set times each day — morning, noon, vespers, bedtime — helps us be aware of God’s presence throughout the day and night. It draws a thread of praise and thanksgiving through the sometimes-not-very noble activities of the day and, in fact, makes them holy. Jews, Muslims, and many other religious share this same insight and practice.

And so, in our prayers, we remember that it is God who has “brought us in safety to this new day”…that it is God whom we ask to “preserve us”…to help us “not… fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity” and to “in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling” of the Divine purpose..”

May it be so. Amen.